


Voyage of the Dawn Troodon

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jurassic Park Fusion, Gen, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26342548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: It’s the familiar story: boy runs away from shipmates, boy explores strange island, boy finds enchanted treasure, boy turns into... wait, what?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20
Collections: Narnia Fic Exchange 2020





	Voyage of the Dawn Troodon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/gifts).



Alone, lost on a strange island in a stranger world, Eustace Clarence Scrubb beheld his reflection and despaired.

He had scales. Claws. Serrated teeth. A tail. And _feathers_ — that was a surprise. 

He was still bipedal, at least. 

It was funny, in a way. In a flat world with talking mice and minotaurs and magic, he would have expected fire-breathing dragons.

Not dinosaurs.

Eustace tried to be scientific about it. His first, wild thought was Pachycephalosaurus. But no, there was no telltale dome atop his head, just a foppish crest of feathers. (In a rare moment of self-evaluation and honesty, Eustace acknowledged that the hardheaded pachycephalosaur might have been more fitting.) But he was clearly a therapod of some kind — just not one of the _magnificent_ ones with dagger-teeth and rending claws. No bigger than a man, really. (Bigger than Caspian, though, he thought with malicious glee.)

Large eyes. Binocular vision. Excellent hearing. Three-fingered hands. Sickle-claw toe, but it wasn’t as wickedly curved as he’d hoped. If he had to be a therapod, why not something fierce and intimidating? Why not a Velociraptor, or Allosaurus? Instead, he felt... small and birdlike.

_Troodon_. Eustace snorted with disgust, and then recoiled at the unaccustomed noise.

His priggish cousins would never let him hear the end of _this_.

* * *

Rebuilding the ship was slow work. Eustace was not fit for much of it, of course, being too small and lacking opposable thumbs. But at least he could put his excellent night vision to work as sentry. At first it was quite boring. But Reepicheep kept him company, once Eustace conquered the disturbing instinct to eat the Talking Mouse. Which was an abhorrent thought, no matter how annoying Reepicheep could be. Eustace was a _vegetarian_. 

And Reep wasn’t all that bad, really. 

Night after night, the two sat in the crow’s nest. Eustace trained his new large eyes on the line of trees where the beach gave way to beeches. Reepicheep kept up a running commentary about Narnian legends of dinosaurs, and how no one had seen any since the Witch’s Winter, an age ago.

_Ice Age? Extinction event?_ Eustace wished he could speak, or at least scribble ideas in his journal, but his three grasping digits were ill suited to pencil or quill. (He had tried. Reep was a brick for not making fun of the results.)

Edmund had tried to console him by bringing up all the species he could have transformed into instead, under the mistaken impression that Eustace would find an ankylosaur’s club-tail anything but a delight. Lucy’s running commentary was more useful. She had a scientific mind — for a girl — and kept suggesting new things to observe and new hypotheses to test.

He tried not to wonder if he would always be like this. It wouldn’t be so bad in Narnia, he supposed. At least he wouldn’t be the only one without thumbs. If he ever got back to England, Harold and Alberta would pitch a fit. On the other hand, Eustace could submit conclusive proof that dinosaurs had feathers, that Troodon had ear cavities and hearing like an owl’s, and that the sickle-claw was not a particularly useful offensive weapon when compared with a sword. Maybe he could use a typewriter.

Maybe he would be dissected before he could try.

Reepicheep unerringly sensed when Eustace began sliding into one of these morbid moods. He would gasp and point dramatically at some innocuous thing: “Oh, Eustace, look there! That hump, is it the ridgeback of a Carnotaur come to devour our brave shipmates? No? Just a rock then? Pity. I would have liked to try my steel against his teeth!” and so on, until Eustace snort-laughed. 

Then Reepicheep would go on to tell one of the old tales, before even Eustace’s cousins’ time, like the quest King Olvin of Archenland undertook to win the hand of Lady Liln by defeating the Dread Tyrannosaur Pire. It sounded a lot like Arthurian legends, only with dinosaurs, which made it vastly more interesting than anything Eustace had studied in school.

Absently, he scanned the treeline again. No suspicious shadows, no movement, no threat. The feathered crest atop his head relaxed and flattened. 

“And then King Cretas the Seafarer raced the serpent Elasmosaurus to the edge of the world. The winner would survive, and the loser would be eaten. But King Cretas was clever, and he knew Elasmosaurus was overconfident, so the king hatched a plan — what is it, Eustace?” Reepicheep whispered, suddenly alert.

Eustace himself didn’t know what he had reacted to, at first. His body was tense and his crest was fully erect and his huge eyes were dilated as far as they could go, straining to make out the edge of one particular shadow... that had been six meters to the left a moment ago. 

Eustace screeched an alarm, and then before he could think he had launched himself out of the crow’s nest, bounded down to the deck and onto the sand, with Reepicheep astride his outstretched neck, waving his rapier and shouting dire threats. On the beach, Lucy and Eustace stood side by side between Caspian and the other therapod.

A _much_ larger, _magnificent_ therapod with a horned snout, wicked claws and even more wicked teeth. 

When the battle was over, Eustace wished he had been able to take notes about the Carnotaur’s movements — but when they found the gold bracelet on one stubby arm, Eustace felt sick. 

Lord Octesian’s body was too large and heavy to float out to sea, so the Narnians built a funeral pyre. 

_That could have been me._ Eustace could envision it with perfect clarity: if he had been transformed into a larger therapod and approached his cousins with frantic gestures, he might have been hacked to pieces with Caspian’s second-best sword. 

“There wasn’t anything left of Lord Octesian in there,” Lucy told him later, stroking Eustace’s snout, heedless of his sharp-if-not-terrifying teeth. (He supposed a girl literally raised by wolves wouldn’t be scared of much in any case. Plus, this was _Lucy_. Eustace didn’t think she was scared of anything.) “He had gone totally wild, Eustace, or mad. That won’t happen to you. We won’t let it.” Her voice was so fierce it almost convinced him, but she forgot how well Troodons could see in the dark. Tears ran down her cheeks.

Eustace pretended not to see. He wondered which of them he was protecting.

* * *

When the ship was safely offshore once more, Eustace disappeared for the space of a day, finally secure in the knowledge that his shipmates would not leave him. He spent his time digging through the treasure hoard. His claws may not have been clever enough to hold a pen, but he could dig swiftly and surely — without any fear of being turned into a dinosaur, since he had already stupidly triggered _that_ spell. Finally he found what he had half-hoped, half-dreaded would be there: a clutch of stone eggs. (All right, fair’s fair, he hadn’t known they would be _stone_.) He picked one up, cradled it in his claws.

For a moment, a future shown tantalizing before his eyes: a world — Narnia or England, it made no difference — where famous scientists would flock to see his discoveries, a world where he revived a lost species from extinction, a world where he would be _filthy stinking rich_ from all the people wanting to see Scrubb’s Dinosaurs. A world where the dinosaurs took back the land that had once been theirs, roaring and ravaging through the countryside and its soft, unprotected prey—

Eustace squawked in dismay and dropped the egg.

It cracked in two, revealing not a fossilized chick but a dazzling creche of gemstone. 

Eustace shuddered with relief. It wasn’t an egg, just a geode. 

He looked down at the rest of the clutch. Perfectly smooth, perfectly egg-shaped... and perfectly intact. This wasn’t England. Lucy had told him of the stone statues Aslan had once brought back to life. In a world where boys could be turned into dinosaurs by touching cursed gold, and where statues could be reanimated, maybe rocks could be rocks and still hatch into dinosaurs. Like the one that almost ate Caspian, Edmund and Lucy. 

A moment later, Eustace was panting, and all the pretty stone eggs were shattered into a hundred fragments of rock and glittering gemstone. 

Distantly, Eustace wondered if this was the kind of thing he should be sorry for. He might have just killed something, after all. Maybe it was the Troodon brain taking over. But he felt no bloodlust, no satisfaction — only a dizzying relief. 

He would bury the treasure if it took him a year of digging, Eustace vowed fiercely. He would break any other eggs he found, stone or not. And he would remain the only dinosaur in Narnia. 

* * *

Reepicheep found him there the next day, his claws torn and bloody, some of his pinions torn out, his whole body bruised from bashing into rocks with his frantic digging. He was keening — a pitiful, sorrowful noise — with every new scrape of earth. 

“Eustace, my friend, stop now.” Reepicheep stayed his paw. “This is not your burden to bear.”

Eustace snarled at him. Who else could touch the treasure without being cursed? Who else knew enough about dinosaurs to recognize any fragment that needed to be splintered or buried where it couldn’t do anyone any harm? 

“It’s true, I can’t help with the gold or giant bones, and neither can the others,” said Reepicheep, “but you’re not alone. And you’re forgetting someone who _can_ help. I think it’s time you talk with him.”

Eustace rolled his huge eyes, pointed at his mouth and snapped his jaws shut.

“Aslan will understand you,” said Reepicheep confidently. (For a mouse, he had an awful lot of confidence.)

Eustace grumbled and ducked his head, but Reepicheep’s words had a magic of their own: one that conjured a golden warmth and a smell of sweet grass and a soaring sensation...

“My brave son,” came a Voice. “Let me help you finish your work.”

* * *

That night, Eustace walked back to camp on human legs. Reeicheep rode triumphantly on his shoulder, and his stalwart confidence helped Eustace stammer his way through explanations and apologies and halting words of welcome and thanks. 

Through it all, the golden warmth settled under Eustace’s skin (human skin!), and he kept repeating: “It was Aslan. He helped me.” Later, he wondered if anyone but Reep understood what he really meant: _He helped me bury it all, where it can’t hurt anyone again, no more treasure, no more eggs, just rocks underground._

_And he turned me Human again._ It wasn’t an afterthought — Eustace was staggeringly glad to be a boy, and not a Troodon — but after the awful vision he’d had, it seemed far less important than ensuring that Narnia wouldn’t be invaded by the most fearsome predators to have ever lived in any world.

“What are you thinking, my friend?” Reepicheep’s voice pulled Eustace out of himself.

It would take a while to get used to talking again, he thought.

“I keep forgetting I can talk aloud,” said Eustace aloud with a sheepish smile. “Edmund and Lucy are probably glad of it,” he added, trying a weak joke. 

“They’re just glad to have you back,” promised Reepicheep.

“Glad to be back,” Eustace said fervently.

* * *

After everything, back in England, it all seemed like a fever-dream. But Eustace could still remember the way the night once lit up for him, bright as day. The speed and power in his legs, the extra balance afforded by the tail, the incredible sense of smell... he felt small, clumsy and blind by comparison.

For his birthday, Harold and Alberta gave him a subscription to the _Journal of Paleontology_.

“I don’t know what to feel,” he confessed to Edmund later. 

“Are you still interested in paleontology?”

Eustace ducked his head. “Well, yes.” 

“Why are you ashamed of that?”

“Well... I was a right little beast — brat, I mean. That’s what got me turned into a dinosaur in the first place, isn’t it?” He fidgeted, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “Isn’t it like saying I... miss being that way? Like I thought it was a good thing?” 

Edmund rubbed his chin. “I don’t think so,” he said at last, and for just a flash, Eustace saw him not as his cousin, but as the Just King of Narnia, tall and bearded and wise. “Dinosaurs themselves weren’t wicked creatures, Eustace, just animals.” 

Eustace flushed with guilt, and Edmund held up a hand to forestall his next argument. 

“Dangerous creatures,” he added, “which would have overrun Narnia if resurrected by the same cruel magic that transformed you. You did well, Eustace. The very fact that Aslan helped you should lay to rest any fears you have on that front.”

And then Eustace’s shoulders did relax, and he sighed. “It was just a pity,” he said. “To see living dinosaurs, and then not be able to see them anymore. Ever.” He would never be as eloquent as Edmund, but his cousin seemed to understand.

“So help the world see them,” said Edmund. “You have a gift, Eustace: a unique knowledge no one else on Earth has. You’ll have to do the work the old fashioned way, but you have an instinct now that can help you put the pieces together. Prove that Troodon had feathers. Prove that Carnotaurus used its tail to knock its foe’s feet out from under them.” They shared a rueful grin at the memory. “Bring them to life for everyone else,” finished Edmund softly. 

Eustace looked down at the glossy journal cover. It showed an Iguanadon in a ludicrous pose. It looked more like a kangaroo than a dinosaur — sitting back on its awkwardly bent tail, when Eustace _knew_ the tail should be straight and balanced. He felt it in his bones.

He knew he should ask if it was what Aslan wanted. But the words stuck in his throat. They felt too private, too raw. So he asked instead the question that seemed even more pressing: “What do you think Reep would say?”

“You tell me,” said Edmund. “You knew him best.”

There was a lump in Eustace’s throat. “He’d say it was a worthy challenge.” 

Edmund nodded, and it was like Eustace had received a blessing: the decision was made, a weight lifted, and he felt that soaring, golden warmth again. 

“I’ll do it,” Eustace said. He could almost feel the phantom feathers of his crest lifting in eagerness.

Edmund clapped his shoulder. “I know you will.”

If he had still been a dinosaur, Eustace would have roared in triumph. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know there may be some paleontological inaccuracies here, starting with whether Troodon is rightfully its own species. But I ask you — what other dinosaur could I have inserted so smoothly into the book title? 
> 
> All errors are my own. (But maybe some of them can be generously chalked up to the difference in Narnian dinosaur biology, or to Eustace’s limited knowledge from 1941.)


End file.
